{6.23.12} 20 years at camp.

in 1992, i arrived at the salvation army’s camp arnold for the first time in my life. 20 years later, i look back and am overjoyed to know that camp arnold has been a part of every summer since then, either as a camper, volunteer, or staff member.

and because 20 seems like a special number and today we get our first batch of campers, i want to tell you all about why camp arnold is so special to me.

when i was 7, life wasn’t really great for me. i came from a very violent, chaotic home where i was an only child with a lot of grown up responsibility. camp offered me a place to be seven years old. so i went back.

and a few years later, i was placed with a counselor who changed my life.

amber.
wheeler.

you guys, never has there been a prettier, nicer, more fun counselor. she was the best counselor ever.

except.
ask me what we did. i have no clue.
ask me what she said. i have no clue.
ask me why she was so great. i still don’t have a clue.

a few years ago i found a Bible i’d received from camp that summer. and amber had written me a message in it.

and it hit me.

amber was so great because she showed me Jesus when i needed it the most. she made me feel loved in ways that i desperately needed but couldn’t identify.

 

and i kept going to camp. i went through my awkward “i love hanson i’m so cool” phase at camp.

{i even stood like i thought i was cool}

and just in case you are foolishly believing that i’ve always been kind of cool at camp, i would like you to observe what i was wearing on the lower half of my body in the following picture:

thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt and assuming that i’m wearing a jean skirt, but you’re wrong. those are jeans. just regular jeans with a crotch almost to my knees.

and i had head lice that summer.

and that summer, when i was 15, i saw a S.E.A.R.C.H. crew member who was 15 and there was something different about them. i watched them and tried to figure it out, and suddenly it hit me. they knew Jesus. in a real way. a way that gave them a joy i didn’t have.

every summer at camp, i gave my life to Jesus.
no seriously, EVERY SUMMER.

that was the first summer i didn’t give my life to Jesus.
instead, i just surrendered what i’d already given him.
i wrote in my journal, “when i get home, i am going to live for God.”

and that changed me. that was the start of my faith journey. i’d had many fake starts, but that was the beginning.

the following summer was my last year as a camper. i became friends with the staff members and decided it was time for me to give a whole summer at camp.

so i was hired as the canteen director.

and in retrospect, i look back and go… “what were they THINKING?” i was so young i had to find someone over 18 to help me count the money! and i made a lot of embarrassing, hyperdramatic teenage girl mistakes and decisions.

i also got egged for the first time that summer. and it was raw.

as summer came to a close, something i’d been pushing aside had to be dealt with. when i got home, i would be entering my senior year in high school.. as the class president. i’d never been involved in student government and was kind of the underdog win, and it freaked me out. the last day of camp while everyone was partying in the craft house, i was wandering around the campgrounds, crying. and then lincoln and aaron found me. and i told them i was scared. so just like the below picture, they stood on either side of me, and put their arms around me and walked with me. and they gave me strength, and encouragement, and though i wished i could stay at camp so long i would miss the whole school year, i knew that camp had given me what i would need to make it through.

in the busyness of my senior year, my camp application ended up buried under a pile of things and i found it too late. so i talked to the camp director, and he figured out a way for me to be at camp. and God is really funny how he works. that summer i got to know the camp director’s two kids a little bit. and somehow, for some reason, there are a few pictures of us from that summer.

{you will see why this is a funny and a God thing}.

that was also the summer when a boy i’d started liking in 2000 {the year of those awful pants!} and i were finally on the same page, and we were pretty official. and that was an important thing, because it was my first relationship. and it had required a lot of patience and growing and even though things clearly didn’t end up with us together, i wouldn’t go back and re-write any of it, because it taught me so much {though a lot of it in hindsight}.

in 2004, i only spent one session at camp. and in another funny God-thing, very much related to the earlier pictures, i found out claire had never been to coldstone and agreed to take her. but her cousin katie was visiting, and i thought… well, i should take katie too. so on the last day of camp, after the final concert, i took two little girls i barely knew to coldstone. they were so little they both had to sit in the backseat. and we took a picture. me and claire and her random cousin i didn’t know.

the following summer, i was a counselor for the first time. i dealt with crazy spiritual warfare.
at one point, i walked into my cabin and made it about five feet before i fell on the ground, because there was an incredibly oppressive spirit.
and my good friend beth and i made hard decisions that brought us closer.
we learned a lot about the cost of following Christ and doing the right the thing.
and how sometimes what God asks us to do can hurt.
my cabin won the spirit stick because we had some pretty awesome cabin cheers.

the next two summers brought those short one camp session visits. and the second summer, it was hard to leave.
i pulled over on the side of the road and cried.
“God, bring me back here!”
i begged.
and he said no.
but then he gave me a plan that has been in effect since that day.

“stay at your job.
when the time is right, quit your job and be a counselor next summer.
and then trust me with the fall.”

the following summer i was a counselor. and then i trusted God with the fall.. which eventually turned to summer.
the following summer i lead search crew. and then i trusted God with the fall.. which eventually turned to summer.
the following summer i was the craft director. and then i trusted God with the fall.. which eventually turned to summer.
the following summer i was the craft director again. then i trusted God with last fall.. which eventually became this summer.
and now i am again leading the search crew.

God continually paves a way for me back to camp arnold every summer. and every summer i decide to take that road, i am changed. i become more aware of who i am, who God is, and the tension between those two things.

remember how i said God is funny about things and i showed you pictures of me and those little girls?
well, they are grown up now. and they are all part of the way God has changed my life through camp arnold. because camp arnold has given me the kind of friends most people dream about. the friends who listen to you and cry with you, who see you at your worst and best and love you just the same. friends i am going to have the rest of my life because our summers together at camp have turned us into family.

the past twenty summers at camp arnold have taught me

as a camper

• that i am loved
• how to deal with my anger problems
• that head lice is okay
• how to canoe
• lying doesn’t make you friends
• rules have purpose
• Christ can transform you.

thank you camp arnold. i love you.